Resources:

This is a list of most of the URLs that have been mentioned on the December
list. You'll need to make your own judgement about what's useful and what
is not  I post everything. The comments next to the links
are mostly whatever was posted on the list, not my own words. This has
turned into an amazing resource list. -Valerie

babynames.com - Baby names given in
the US in 1997, listed in order of popularity.

1996
Illinois Selected Vital Statistics - Interesting reading, includes most
popular baby names, ages of youngest and oldest parents in the state, sizes
of largest and smallest babies, etc.
Illinois most popular names for
boys
and
girls
from 1990 to 1999, listed by year.

1990 US Census most popular names of
females
and
males
in the USA. The other baby name lists only cover babies born in one
particular year. This list is unique because it covers popularity of names
in the entire US population. That is, it includes both adults and children.
Did you know that Patricia is the second most popular female name in the US?

Babyzone - has
loads of info about baby names. They have categories like Shakespearean and
Chinese and celebrity baby names, cool baby names, and lists of name
popularity. Their logical
names for twins page is really cool -- it suggests sets of names like
Deborah and Melissa. Both names mean "bee", but Deborah is Hebrew and
Melissa is Greek.

Ball Dynamics - I called them
initially to ask why they suggested a 55cm ball for my height when at least
one midwife had said 65. The woman I spoke to said the 55cm recommendation
is for when it's fully inflated, used as a physical therapy or exercise
device. She said most women who use them during late pregnancy, labor, or
just after the baby is born prefer to go one up in size, and not inflate the
ball fully. She also said that if I wanted one of their balls, I should get
one of the "burst resistant" ones--the gymnic plus or the fitball--because
the air lets out of them slowly if a sharp object punctures them. I thought
that was a good idea. She also said I didn't need to buy a base, and that
one of the $5 rings they sell (for some hand strengthening thing) would serve
to stabilize it if it was close to round. My husband was concerned that I'd
sit on it then roll over backwards; I didn't and still don't think this will
be a problem. Anyway, I thought I'd share in case anyone else wants one.
Oh, they shipped it the day after I called; I called Tuesday and it arrived
the next Monday. Their prices are very reasonable and the phone people are
nice.

The TV show "A Baby's Story" shows births. It is shown in the U.S.
every day Mon-Fri from 2-3pm Eastern time on The Learning Channel. You can
find the schedule at
TLC
program schedule -- click on "TLC" to see it.

Exclusively
Pumping - is an entire board devoted to the topic of pumping breastmilk
as many moms pump and bottle feed because of preemies, going back to work
after a few weeks, or just being uncomfortable with breastfeeding.

Parent's Place
also has boards on Exclusively Pumping, Breastfeeding and Working, Pregnant
and Nursing, Adoption and Nursing, Nursing and Toddlers, and a few others.
Click on the link and go to the Breastfeeding section.

Mother's Nature has info on
pumps and supplies.
Breastfeeding as Birth Control:

A La Leche League article called
The
Importance of Newborn Stool Counts talks about what to expect of babies'
stools.
Nursing Clothes: (you don't need nursing clothes for breastfeeding,
but sometimes it's fun to have them)

Motherwear - has a very
good reputation for making good clothes. Note that sizes tend to run big,
so if you're not sure whether to order something in medium or a large, go
for the size medium.

There are 8 breastmilk banks in North America, and they are lifesaving
for some babies. There's 1 in Canada, 1 in Mexico, and 6 in the US (CA, CO,
DE, DC, KY, MA, and NC). For information about services or donations, you
can call The Human Milk Banking Association of North America at 888-232-8809.

Fit For A Kid is
Daimler-Chrysler's car seat safety inspection program. They will inspect
your car seat's installation for free. Look toward the bottom middle of
the page and enter your zip code, or call toll-free 1-877-FIT-4-AKID
to find a car seat fitting station near you.

Choices for Children -
This website has a ton of information on how to find daycare in general.
They also sent us [Beate] a big binder of material when we called them that
had printed questionnaires for child care centers etc.

The Child Care Resource Center -
Under Publications for families they have a number of possibly interesting
brochures. However, there is a charge for everything.

It's definitely a good idea to get started on finding quality childcare
early.

There is apparently at the moment only one central place in the US
that is collecting cord blood DONATION (as opposed to the many private
companies who are offering to store your baby's cord blood for a fee). It
is the US Center for Cord Blood Donation -- reachable at 800-869-8608.
FYI, In case you don't know, cord blood has stem cells in it which can be
used for bone marrow transplants for patients with leukemia. There are
other applications under study (or in use??? -- breast cancer and other
forms of cancer). Perhaps someone knows the medical details better than I
do. I called today and, while they prefer to begin the process before 34
weeks, they were happy to hear from me. They are faxing me the forms and
have asked me to fill them out asap, given the time constraints. Then they
will send me a collection kit, which I bring to the hospital when I go to
give birth. I need to inform my midwives that I am doing this (so they
can collect the blood after birth) -- and the people at the donor center
told me they'd welcome the opportunity to have my practice learn about their
program. As a regular blood donor and a registrant on the national bone
marrow registry (and an organ donor), I am delighted to find that I may be
able to help someone with my baby's cord blood. Even if you can't, or
don't want to, participate in this program, please consider passing along
the information to your obstetricians and midwives -- this is a new program,
but one with great promise.

Delivery Buddies:
The "expecting clubs" at ParentsPlace.com seem to have a delivery
buddy system that many month groups use. Groups of 3-5 families keep
closer track of each other, so if one stops posting, others might send
email or call to see if everything is okay. They try to
spread out the due dates of members in each small group, so they don't
all go into delivery (and go silent online) at once.

Tae-Bo 1-800-637-6632 -
Also available from a catalog called Collage. It has the 4 TaeBo tapes in
it, sold as a set for $59.95 with $7.50 S&H, so, you would only save $1
(unless you have to pay tax on the site). But you could buy other exercise
videos for no extra shipping. Call 1-800-433-6769 for the Collage catalog.
The catalog is great for exercise videos that you can't find in stores and
it tells you a lot of information on each tape. Also, they deliver much
faster than the Tae-Bo website does. The Tae-Bo video has also been spotted
at Costco for $25, Sports Authority for $40, and Target for $30-$40.
However, one person's husband says that a kickboxing class would be a much
better workout than Tae-Bo.

Home Pregnancy Test
hCG Levels and FAQ - lists the sensitivity levels of various pregnancy
tests. Sensitivity levels vary widely between brands. If you plan to test
early, it's important to get a highly sensitive brand.

Craig Medical sells cheap
highly-sensitive home pregnancy tests for something like 6 for $24 (including postage).
Last time I checked, these are the cheapest and most sensitive pregnancy test
kits that you can buy anywhere.

Free Offers:Special thanks to Sara Kaminsky, who found most the offers listed
here.

If you have State Farm insurance (any type...auto, homeowner's etc.)
there is a 800 # you can call. You tell them your due date and they send
you a free book. I was expecting a little booklet but it came yesterday and
it's the hardcover, 750 page Mayo Clinic Book of Pregnancy and Baby's First
Year and it's FREE!!!! The number is 1-888-SF-EVENT.

You can download a free font called
Baby's World.To download it to a Windows 95 computer, go to that web page and
right-click on the words "TELECHARGEZ BABY'S WORLD (21ko)!". If you're in
Netscape, choose "Save Link As"; if you're in Internet Explorer choose
"Save Target As". Save the file on your computer. Then unzip it (you'll
need an unzip program such as Stuffit, which is free at
aladdinsys.com). Finally, copy the
downloaded, unzipped, font to your \windows\fonts directory. Then you can
use the font in documents. It's a dingbat font, so each letter of the
alphabet turns into a different baby-related item (booties, pacifier, etc).

Orajel - You fill out a short
survey and they will send you coupons. There is also another link there
(Professional Products) where if you are a dentist or pediatrician they will
send you free samples and literature.

At pampers.com there is a free
email newsletter that you can subscribe to that is about parenting. You can
also enter to win free diapers.

At gerber.com under special offers,
you can sign up to receive special offers.

evenflo.com has a contest to win
free stuff. It also has a lot of other useful information.

Growth Charts for Breastfed
Babies, and, if you need it, here's a Javascript
calculator to
convert between metric and English measurements. ....or use a low tech
calculator: pounds divided by 2.2 = kg, and inches x 2.54 = cm.

Here's another set of
Growth
Charts,this one from Pampers. We don't know if it's for a variety of
babies or the classic American growth chart for white middle-class
formula-fed midwestern babies that was the standard from the 1950s until
recently. If the links on that page don't work for you, try these:

A discussion
of home schooling on Grex.
An ongoing low-traffic discussion forum that includes parents who home
school their kids, some teens who are currently being home schooled and can
answer questions about what they think of home schooling, and a lot of
people who are curious about how home schooling works.

Timberdoodle Company -
Christian company that sells homeschooling supplies and has articles about
homeschooling.

[US] National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration - the article on "Buying Safer Cars for Child
Passengers" is under "Child Safety Seats" in the side listings. Good info!!
Has an article available entitled "Buying a safer car for child
passengers", which includes how to make sure a car seat fits in your car,
and some known incompatibilities. It's available at AAA or
the NHTSA website or from 888-DASH-2DOT.

Ambigram.Matic -
A possible quilt square design idea. Ambigrams are words or phrases that
can be read in more than one way, most commonly right-side-up and upside-down.
Ambigram.Matic is an online Ambigram Generator. Flip any word, different
words of the same length, or even an entire (symmetrically spaced) sentence
on its head, and read it both ways.

Quiltropolis - has a cooking
e-mail list, and it's not a snooty gourmet list.

Cook for a Day/Eat
for a Month - has info about an email list called "frozen-assets" that
discusses recipes, techniques, etc. for "Once a Month Cooking," and an
online bulletin board. You can even search the email list archives for the
recipes that have been posted on the list.

OAMC has a downloadable cookbook with
30 recipes for a month of cooking and it includes shopping lists, etc.

PACES is the Parent and
Child Education Society. Centered in Chicago's suburbs, PACES serves as a
resource for a variety of approaches to child-rearing and family life.
PACES supports educated parenting, from newborns to preschoolers, without
advocating specific theories or philosophies.

The Fathers of Breastfed
Babies website suggested for baby entertainment you can download the
MIDI Art program for your Windows computer from
www.midiworks.com (it
generates art from recorded MIDI music) and then using it to play free
MIDI music that you can get from
midiworld.com and
www.midifarm.com. I've tried this,
and it really does work -- it grabs my baby's attention and you can kind of
dance with him and look at it together, even if he's feeling fussy. His
favorite setting is "04 - Musical Grid". I'm sure the inventor of the MIDI
Art program never thought his program would be used as a baby soother, but
it does indeed work for us.

Tip: Looking for maternity tights? Some people report buying queen
sized non-maternity tights when they were pregnant--that they were cheaper,
easier to find, and worked just as well.

Tip: Some hospitals have a "breastfeeding boutique" where you can buy
nursing bras in a very wide range of sizes, sometimes for prices as low as
$25.

Beware the "Motherhood" chain of maternity stores. Two people
on the list, at different branches of this store, bought outfits that shrank
too much to wear, but the store refused to exchange them!!!

You may be able to buy a dog gate instead of a baby gate, at a much
lower price.

You can find tons of coupons to save money on other websites at:
flamingoworld.com, and
coolsavings.com. Also
ebates.com gives you rebates on your
purchases at a huge number of on-line stores. (There have been some
complaints that they make you divulge nosy personal information to get your
money, but if you can live with that then it's worthwhile.)

Consumersearch.com is a
huge website of reviews of hundreds of different products. I'm not sure
who writes them or if they're unbiased. You can also sometimes find reviews
of various products on amazon.com,
written by real people who have really used the products.

The Crib Sheet
Catastrophe is Good Housekeeping's site that talks about the results of
tests of 23 brands of crib sheets. Top 5: Land's End, The Company Store,
Eddie Bauer flannel, Eddie Bauer, and Dormisett.
Stores:

Also see the breastfeeding section of this
page for a list of stores that sell nursing clothes.

Baby Catalog of America -
They sell the Britax Roundabout Car seat for $179 plus $8 shipping
for members. A 1 year membership costs $25 and a 3 year is $50. Membership
gives you a 10% discount on all their items. - 800-PLAYPEN. Also, they have
net panties (for holding pads comfortably after delivery) and the chemical
cold peripacks made by Medela. Someone who ordered from here reports that
products arrived quickly and in good shape. On the other hand, there are
three reports of vastly delayed or otherwise messed-up orders from here.

The Baby Lane - This
page has Mother Ease one size diapers and snap covers, which Jeri recommends.
The snap covers are $9.95 each. She can't advertise the name of them on the
Internet because of Mother Ease's company policy, but Jeri says that's what
brand they are, and Jeri says they are worth every penny.

Baby Love Products, Inc. -
this site is located in Canada: if you pay US dollars, the exchange rate
gets you a lot for your money. Has the Medela Pump-in-Style for $225
Canadian, which makes it only $153 USD!!!! That's about $120 savings over
retail. Look on page 27. Drawback: This company can be very slow to ship
what you ordered (Valerie's bras took over a month to arrive).

Baby Trend - has Sit-N-stand
stroller that has a seat up front for the baby, and a place in the back for
an older child to stand. There's also a little seat in the back for the
child to sit instead of stand.

"Babyworks" (1-800-422-2910) - mostly diapers, but some other neat
stuff, like the Baby Cape on page 24

Bosom Buddies 888-860-0041 -
Breastfeeding information, products, and services. Sells a nursing bra
called "Bravado" that is reported to be very comfortable. Nice touch: They
didn't charge for shipping during the holiday season because they felt they
couldn't guarantee fast arrival (but then the bras arrived very quickly
anyway). Even their regular non-overnight delivery is very fast. They also
carry Leading Lady, Mary Jane and Medela bras. One person on the list says,
"I like the design of the Medela bras, but they don't come in my size :-(."
The web site also has a lot of good information about breastfeeding, and
lots of links to other related information.

Dorling Kindersley and Discovery have good books/games/toys.
You can find some DK stuff in bookstores, but both of these companies have
home representatives that market their things.

Dressler Stencils has
stencils you could use to decorate a baby's room (or some other room).

eBay.com - a large on-line auction
community. One person has gotten some great computer things and toys there.
One person reports getting a good deal on several items here, with no
trouble with sending the money and recieving the merchandise.

Gymboree is a good source of colorful baby clothes for boys and girls.
Durable, 100% cotton, not cheap. They carry newborn sizes. Their clothing
is reported not to fade even after years of washing. One person reports that
they have excellent cotton receiving blankets; another reports that their
fleece blankets pilled like crazy.

Hanes/L'eggs/Bali has a special maternity catalog with tons of stuff;
it doesn't carry the larger size maternity bras. If you call the 1-800
Hanes line they can send the maternity catalog.

Hanna Anderson
1-800-222-0544 Like Gymboree, their clothes are colorful for boys and
girls, durable 100% cotton, not cheap; they carry newborn sizes.

JC Penney (1-800-222-6161) - has
a maternity catalog, including larger sizes. If you get the wrong size or
return etc they pay both ways s&h so you don't lose it. if you order from
Penney's, ask for your "maternity discount" and they'll give you 15% off!

Little Koala Mother and Baby
Catalog has the pump-in-style breast pump for $249.30, no shipping costs
and they will let you stretch out the payment over a few months. For info,
look at the very top of the website and click on "Special Payment Plans for
Breastpumps". They need 1/2 down and and then you can pay the rest over 3
months with no interest.

Mimi Maternity

Mother's Nature - auction
site with a large selection of cloth diapers, nursing clothes, baby slings,
breast pumps, nursing bras, and breastfeeding accessories. You can buy and
sell things here. Has a few of the popular breast pumps at some great
prices - has (had?) a few of the Medela Pump in Style for $150!!
Has a page about the
Avent
Isis breast pump.

Mothertime - If you're looking for larger maternity clothes, mothertime
carries them in the store, motherhood through their catalog (18004mom2be).

Motherwear has excellent
nursing clothes. They advertise in almost any parenting magazine you would
pick up. Check the classifieds in a parents' magazine or something like
that. They also carry nursing bras up to size "J", and ones in hard-to-find
colors. 1-800-950-2500

In Australia, check out
Myer/Grace Bros baby
department, they have some bold coloured what the States ladies call
onesies; they are in gorgeous vibrant colours, orange, lime, red, yellow,
etc. They may be Bonds. They also have separates, t-shirts, pants too, from
newborn sizes up. And brightly colored nappies by the brand name Actil.
You can get great singlets to match. The Myer web page says they now
deliver all over the world!

New Arrivals also
has buntings.
They are in Canada, so people in the US get a great currency exchange rate.

The
catalog
of the Nursing Mothers Association of Australia has lots of products for
lactation, babies and children.

Old Navy is a great place for cute, relatively inexpensive baby clothes.

One Step Ahead -
1-800-274-8440 - Their catalog has some diaper bags that are backpacks.
They have compartments like the normal diaper bags for bottles, food,
diapers etc. but are backpack style. Also has strollers, etc. Someone
particularly liked their Personalized Puzzle Stepstool that you can get
personalized with the name of your child.

Successories sells a photo
frame with a quote on it that several people liked. 1-800-535-2773

Target has a checklist
of items to have for baby. (Note that this list was written by people
who want to sell you stuff  you don't need it all.) They also
offer a page of
helpful
hints on planning a shower. Target stores are reported to have good
prices on a wide variety of maternity clothes in many sizes. And they are
reported to have nursing bras for $10.99, all cotton, easy to undo and redo
with one hand. They also sell maternity bras, gowns, and panties. You have
to hunt for them in the lingerie section. They also have maternity
pantyhose for about $3.

Timberdoodle Company -
Christian company that sells homeschooling supplies and has articles about
homeschooling.

Title 9 Sports has maternity
exercise clothes - a great catalog for sports clothes for women in general.
They have both pants and shorts with a wide band (4") that 'cradles' the
tummy. I am doing fine right now with huge shorts, but will probably order
the pants/leggings soon. Their phone number is: 1-800-609-0092. I just
noticed that they also have an email address:
thefolks@title9sports.com

ABClassroom is a free
computer game you can download for your toddler. Nice feature: When it is
running, the program totally takes over the computer, so that your child
can't mess with any of your other programs.

There's a birth story for a woman (I think this is someone who is on our
December list) who gave birth to twins on 9/13, at 25.5 weeks. The babies
were due on 12/24/98. To see it, go to
www.storksite.com click on BBS, then
again on December Babies.

waterbirth.org - has a midwife
finder to find a midwife who does waterbirths, a store for waterbirth
supplies, and other info.

Weird News:

They're
linked by parenthood - Seattle Times article about when the August '96
list held a get-together in person. (Not actually weird news, but it
fits better in this category than any other that is here.)

Newsweek article Are
We Getting Smarter? - IQ scores rose steadily in the 20th century. As
scientists search for the reasons, they are shedding new light on the dance
between genes and life experience that determines intelligence.

The prenatal yoga video offered by Carole's yoga group is available by
calling 1-888-547-4493 to order w/ a credit card, or, mail a check to:
Holistic Life Production, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N #300, Seattle WA 98103.
The instructor on the video is Colette Crawford.
Back to the main December List page.